The Grand Opening, or, Where's Dennis?
It was a rare error in judgment from Mr. Atkins.
Alternately inspiring and panicking each other, we'd gotten to Dark Delicacies a good five hours before showtime. We'd tested the fog (still foggy), mic-checked the voice-alteration box (still sparking and lethal), even tuned our instruments. Best of all, Pete had swung across town and picked up Dennis and chauffeured him to the store, just to insure that the ceaselessly inquisitive Etchison brain didn't leap off down some wrestler-haunted corridor.
And so it was, overconfident and fog-soaked and food-deprived, that Pete somehow agreed to let Dennis take the car and go get his good pal George Clayton Johnson.
Terrific writer, Mr. Johnson. Author of "Logan's Run," Twilight Zone episodes, lots more. Wise conversationalist, too (get him going on Robert Louis Stevenson's efficiency sometime; most productive eighty seconds I've had on the craft of writing in twenty years). A snappy addition to any audience in his straw hat that so nicely accentuates his wise, white beard. Bound by few time constraints, however, and unlikely to constrain Dennis.
Our start time approached. Actual human beings turned up, some of whom we didn't even know. 15, maybe 25 people, a hefty turnout for an experimental reading event. Student, with cameraman. No Dennis. Pete stepped outside to smoke and stare hopefully down Burbank Boulevard across the San Fernando Valley. I sat and played with the power supply to the voice-alteration box.
I don't even remember the moment Dennis actually reappeared, or where he came from. Suddenly, there was his voice, dropped four octaves by the box, intoning, "You do not have to find him. He has already found you." I flicked on my keyboard, glanced toward Pete, who'd also scurried into place at his guitar. I stepped on the fog pedal, blasting poor George Clayton Johnson, who just stood in the onslaught, not even blinking, a bearded, straw-hatted cypress who'd be there, blissfully watching, decades after we'd gone.
I read "Mr. Dark's Carnival," the story I'd originally invented to tell my students on Halloween years before and that had somehow, miraculously, established me as a writer at long last. Pete read a creepy section from his novel, Big Thunder. Dennis read "The Dog Park," the same biting, hilarious, quietly vicious story he'd employed on that seminal 1997 evening with Ramsey Campbell. The fog billowed, the music stayed on D, someone took George home. Somehow, we were launched.
Snapshots, 2004
At what point did we realize that what we were doing meant something, at least to the three of us? I think it was on the second day of that first tour, at a Denny's in Santa Cruz in the pouring rain.
We'd meant to drive together — that was part of the allure. But we didn't. Long story, Pete with a movie conflict, Dennis wrestling with deadlines, etc. I drove alone, stopped midday in the misting wet at Pacheco Park and walked up an empty, grassy hillside toward a lone, twisted tree and marveled for the thousandth time at the variety of California, got lost somewhere on the transition to the 1, and wound up parked right next to my companions, who'd pulled into the Denny's lot moments before.
Pete and Dennis weren't hungry— they'd stopped at Harris Ranch, where the cows really may be slaughtered out back when your steaks are ordered — and I was cold and exhausted. And yet we were at that Denny's for hours and hours, talking Harry Stephen Keeler and Kenneth Patchen, Roxy Music and doo-wop, novel-writing vs. story-writing, wrestling. Gentleman Pete went outside for a smoke and came back with the life story of the prostitute huddled under the awning to stay out of the downpour. Dennis went out for a smoke and disappeared by himself God-knows-where and came back.
The next morning, we did an interview with Rick Kleffel, insightful critic, publisher/editor of The Agony Column website, co-host of a fine book program on the local public radio station. Under Kleffel's gentle, enthusiastic questioning, our collective enthusiasm spilled out. None of us even had new stuff to plug at the moment, we pointed out; we weren't in this for the money (never mind the box of T-shirts in the trunk, the piles of books and CDs and memorabilia we'd lugged hopefully north with us). We dismissed the notion that the purpose of horror literature was catharsis, and then, one by one, reinforced it. We carefully positioned ourselves as between genres — classic horror? Mainstream literary? Something else? — then reaffirmed our loyalty to the field. Dennis told a story about Stephen King roaming the halls of a 1970s World Fantasy Convention in a computer-geek T-shirt and boxer shorts. Afterwards, none of us could remember quite what we'd said. But we were pretty certain we'd meant every word.
Dark Carnival, Berkeley, CA
10/20/04
A late arrival — the accomplished, laughing, frighteningly bright woman who, as a girl some thirty years before, had provided the inspiration for the desperate and possibly psychotic Theresa Daughrety character in my novel, The Snowman's Children — saved us from the ignominy of an event with more performers than attendees. We left the shop happy, anyway, because the friendly Dark Carnival people had made us these really nifty magnets and bookmarks with our book covers and the event dates on them.
Evidence. Maybe we'd been there after all.
Borderlands, San Francisco,
10/21/04
Many more people, startlingly enthusiastic crowd, fog machine seemingly kicking up extra-thick mist in response and nearly choking the extraordinarily knowledgeable and helpful staff. Good thing, too, since we basically had to park in Oakland and walk the amps and equipment miles down Market Street, waving that mutant power supply-cord before us like a cobra on a leash.
Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego, 10/22/04, or, Where's Dennis II?
Actually, where are Dennis and Pete, since somehow our gypsy caravan got itself separated in the Orange Crush freeway strangle, and I arrived at the shop a good ninety minutes before my colleagues. We left the fog machine in the car, did the show dry. A woman came whom I'd taught at a Writer's Conference two years before. The fact that she even remembered who I was gave me that gorgeous, surprising making-at-least-a-little-dif-ference feeling I only really get from the teaching part of my writing life.
Rolling Dark 1 1/2, or, Someone Wake Those People Up
and Tell Them We're Done…
Hilton Hotel and Convention Center, Burbank, CA June, 2005
When the people running the 2005 Horror Writers of America convention called and asked if we'd like to do an encore of our Rolling Darkness Revue performance as the featured Friday night entertainment, we got a little proud, I think. Or maybe just overenthusiastic.
We knew we'd loved the previous fall enough to do another round, despite the fact that we'd raked in almost enough money on T-shirt sales to cover gas expenses between Santa Cruz and Berkeley. So we looked at this rare summer opportunity as a chance to reprise what had worked and try out some new elements.
We thought we'd include (ready for the impressive biz lingo?) inster-stitials: zippy, brief extracts from our works as transitions between full-length readings. Plus a backing musician this time, the multi-talented Rex Flowers. Plus a longer intro, to take better advantage of the voice box. Plus a bang-bang flurry of terrifying excerpts for the grand finale.